Thursdays with Taryn~ Dusting off the Past To Find Inspiration

I've been thinking about the fact that I'm really kind of burnt out on blogging— at least, I am so far this year. Last year was a real doozy, as I attempted to put myself out there more because I had just been published and well, a girl's gotta promo and I want to keep up this year, but feel like I've lost my gusto and had the wind knocked out of me.

Today though, I'm taking advice from fellow KIW, author Katherine Lowry Logan, who suggested resharing old posts that have been popular here on the blog. As I was scrolling through my prior posts, all the way back to mid-2007, I realized that a lot of the first ones I wrote, the ones that really inspired me probably haven't seen the light of day. I had no followers back then and simply took pleasure in putting my thoughts down and talking to myself. I mean, I still do that...talk to myself, that is, but what if something I wrote back then, that few have seen, might give inspiration or resonate with another author or aspiring author now? If I leave them back there, they'll just get lost in the slush pile of my blog writing archives, but if I find a way to repurpose those thoughts and ramblings, it could be a good thing.

I mean, I have to admit...back then I was writing blogs for the pure fun of it, because I was inspired and wanted to share my thoughts about myself as a writer. I really didn't think anyone was listening anyway, but I still put it out there, knowing someone might stumble upon it. I wasn't caught up in pushing promo, for myself or anyone else at the time. I just felt I had something to say, even if I was just sharing diary entries and a glimpse into who I was as I first started my writing journey. And the thing was, I was spending a great deal of time actually WRITING, not just on this blog, but on my stories, and that's not something I can say I do on a really regular basis anymore. I want and NEED to change that.

Perhaps this will be a good thing for me as a writer- to climb over things and sit in the back of my virtual closet and dig through my virtual cardboard boxes and see what gems I might find to rejuvenate my own writing, to remind me who I am at my writer's core and to share with others and hope that they find inspiration from stories that have been rebooted.

So here's where I'm going to begin this year- a post from August of 2007 (though I've updated it a little, mostly in part due to referencing my children now, as opposed to almost 6 years ago because my daughter wasn't old enough to read yet. She's now an avid reader too and loves to write her own little stories, at home and at school. Teacher loves them and thinks she gets that from me or so she said at the Parent/Teacher conference we had a few months back)

Books and the Condescending Librarian

Writing is an extensive endeavor. Even when I'm not writing, I'm either reading something by a writer or reading something to educate myself on writing or doing research. Even when I'm not doing that, writing stays on my mind. I love to talk about writing.

My desire to write comes from somewhere deep inside me. I'm not even sure when it started to be honest. Some little ember ignited my love of reading and my mom even said that as a child I loved books and making up stories.

I know at one point in my life there was an instance that could've damaged my love of reading and writing for the rest of my life. It's any wonder it didn't.

I was in 3rd grade and I was going to borrow a book that was probably more advanced than my reading level. I always borrowed books from the school library, but that one time, the librarian made a point of telling me she thought it was too advanced for me to read and she didn't think I could read it before I brought it back. It could be that I had borrowed it before and hadn't read it and wanted to re-borrow it. I'm not sure, but I told her I would read it by the time I had to return it a week later.

Of course, I didn't read it and maybe it was stubbornness or just rebellion on my part, but when I brought it back, she asked me point blank if I read it and I told her the truth. She told me that if I didn't read the books I borrowed I shouldn't borrow any. Now I can't recall for sure if she didn't allow me to borrow books anymore, but I do recall that I didn't want to borrow any more from her and I don't think I did the rest of that school year.

I still look back and see her as a condescending adult who should've known better. She humiliated me, hurt my feelings and made me feel about this big.

I didn't borrow any books from the school library again until I started 4th grade, at a different school with a different librarian. I look back on that now and wonder how an adult could look at an 8 or 9 year old child and chastise them for something like that.

Now, I do remind my kids not to borrow something if they don't really want or plan to read it, but I wouldn't tell them that they couldn't borrow ANY books from the library. I encourage both my kids to enjoy books for everything they are worth, the adventures and emotions that you get from reading a book that puts you in another world or another life.

It was shortly after that incident in 3rd grade though that I started collecting books of my own to read. I convinced my dad to get me a subscription to the Just for Girls book club through Scholastic and if I read a book I liked well enough, I ended up buying it at some point. I started creating my OWN library.

Like I said, it could've ruined my love of reading and writing, but in some ways, that librarian's snotty attitude may have actually had the opposite affect on me. I wanted books of my own more than ever. In fact, I've got a LOT of books I've never even read in my bookcase & on my Kindle (Perhaps it's the early stages of being a hoarder- of books at least). They are on my TBR list, but I know that I can read them anytime I want without someone looking down their nose at me and telling me that I have to do it their way or the highway...

It may well have been when I started dreaming of being a writer, too, because if I never stepped foot in another library, at least I'd have my own stories I could read and no one telling me that I couldn't.

Isn't it funny how childish beliefs and issues carry over into adulthood, but at the same time might well have been the catalyst for my desire to write? Maybe I should be thankful for the condescending librarian, but more so, I'm glad that it didn't turn me against reading & writing altogether.

Was there ever anyone or anything that could've turned you off of writing? Please feel free to share.

I Have The Touch

Kindle Touch, that is....
pictured below
with cover of Suzanne's Late Harvest,
which is the first book I read on my Kindle.

I received some money for Christmas, so I did the unthinkable- well, at least for me- I bought a Kindle Touch, along with a few new eBooks. I had already been using the Kindle for PC app on my laptop, so this was just a natural progression that I knew I would eventually succumb to.

As a writer who has always valued the weight of a real book in my hand, the crisp rustle of the pages, the smell of the ink, or better yet, the aged aroma, of a book, I find that print books fill me with this mystical sense that "all's right with the world." The idea of reading books on the computer or an eReader was a foreign idea that, for a long time, I refused to surrender to. I'm not a huge fan of change, so it took a while for me to warm to the idea.

I grew up in the 80's & 90's, when eBooks were not commonplace, or least, not on my radar at all. Heck, my parents didn't even have a HOME computer until I moved out when I was 20. The very idea of reading a BOOK on the computer was as foreign to me as going to Russia or China or Japan. I did NOT speak the language and some ways I just didn't want to. I wanted to cling to the traditional mindset of what constitutes becoming a published author.

See, what I understood was my Smith Corona word processor and my 3 1/2 inch floppy disks that housed my stories and which I took for granted, not always saving backup of what I typed. At some point, ol' Smithy gave up on me and started acting wonky, corrupting my disks to the point that printing out saved files looked like alien transcripts from Planet ShouldaPrintedThatOutToBeginWith.

Meanwhile, all a young writer like myself dreamed of was seeing my stories in print, of grasping it in my hands in the middle of Joseph Beth Booksellers or Waldenbooks, Barnes & Noble or Borders... or even my beloved Little Professor in Frankfort, Kentucky, which no longer exists. In fact quite a few of those brick & mortars are disappearing now and it still saddens me.

I eagerly looked forward to being able to say,

"Whoa! This is utterly fantastic! It's real! LOOK! This is MY book!"

I grew up longing for that moment. Whether the book succeeded was another story, but that first taste of personal success was borne of my love for reading and the sense of satisfaction of holding my creation in my hands, of whisking through the pages for a favorite passage and feeling that, once in print my words and a story of my heart that I loved so much would be immortalized- captured for eternity and solidified in those pages of that binding. And others might read it and glean some joy and happiness from something that came from ME and my heart.

I knew of Amazon and I remember when it was just about "books" but of course, in this quickly changing landscape of technology, eBooks were just becoming more the "norm" at the same time I started to come into my own as a writer and that hit on a very personal level. I had put my writing on the back burner for a decade after Smithy's demise. I think in some ways, I wondered, what's the point if all my hard work is wasted on computer technology that I can't trust? My word processor wasn't much more than a baby version of computers and I'd be damned if I'd trust saving my writing on anything like that, not without printing out huge stacks of cumbersome pages, just to be sure nothing was lost if my computer got sick on me or files were deleted by accident.

Of course, I've warmed to the idea of eBooks more as time has gone on. I've been growing as a writer and a reader, just as eBooks are growing in the publishing industry by leaps and bounds. I'm excited that my first novel will be available in both eBook and print versions. I feel the meshing of the two worlds as they have collided with each other. I don't think print books are the dinosaurs who will become extinct, but I do believe they have to make room for their modern day descendents because change happens and much as we might not like it, it's usually a good thing.

I want to believe that they can walk hand-in-hand in the business though and for me, buying my Kindle Touch didn't change my views about reading books completely in eBook format. There are still some authors I will always read in print, so long as their books are printed. One being Yasmine Galenorn, though I did buy her novella Etched in Silver for my Kindle, even though I already have it in the print anthology it was originally released in, but that's because I LOVE that story so much I wanted access to it no matter where I am.

So yeah, there are certain book series I will buy in print vs eBook, but I did discover that Kindle has amassed a great collection of "free" books- a lot of them classics, some I've read and some I've always wanted to read, so I downloaded a bunch of those (Jane Austen, D.H. Lawrence, H.P. Lovecraft, etc) as well as books by my fellow authors or authors I've recently discovered.

All in all, I can't believe how much I'm enjoying the freedom my Kindle Touch gives me, to read books away from the computer in a way that doesn't feel like I'm reading on a techie device at all. Much as my former "print books only" self would disagree, I have to say that my purchase was well worth it already and I have a feeling I'm going to enjoy it for a LONG time to come- especially knowing I can tote my "eLibrary" with me anywhere without lugging a dufflebag full of books and yet I'll never be at a loss for some good adventure, mystery or romance. Yeah, that's what I call having the touch.